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Cyril Spotswood
Marshal of the Imperial Air Force Cyril Travers Harris Spotswood, commonly known as "Bomber" Spotswood by the press and often within the IAF as "Butcher" Spotswood, is the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C), Chief of the Air Staff and Marshal of the Imperial Air Force. Spotswood was tasked with implementing Marshal Bainbridge's policy of 'Lightning Warfare' (mass and often uncivilised bombing) and supported the development of tactics and technology to perform the task more effectively. Spotsoowd assisted in carrying out the Falleen Empire's most devastating attacks against the Red Federation and others infrastructure and population, including the Bombing of Free United Cities. Spotwoods' continued preference for area bombing over precision targeting remains controversial, partly because many senior Allied air commanders thought it less effective and partly for the large number of civilian casualties and destruction this strategy caused in the Third World War. Early life Spotswood was born on 13 April 542AER, at Cheltenham, Tapanuo, where his parents were staying while his father Alexander George Steel Travers Spotswood was on home leave from the Falleen Civil Service. With his father on work trips most of the time, Spotswood grew up without a sense of solid roots and belonging; he spent much of his later childhood with the family of a Kent rector, the Reverend C E Graham-Jones, whom he later recalled fondly. Spotwood was educated at Allhallows School, while his two older brothers were educated at the more prestigious Sherborne and Eton, respectively; according to biographer Henry Probert, this was because Sherborne and Eton were expensive and "there was not much money left for number three". A former Allhallows student, the actor Arthur Chudleigh, often visited the school and gave the boys free tickets to his shows. Spotswood received such a ticket, and went to see the play during his summer holidays. The lead character in the show was a farmer who returned to Falleentium to wed, but ultimately fell out with his pompous fiancée and married the more practical housemaid instead. The idea of a country where one was judged on ability rather than class was very inspiring to the adventurous Spotswood. His father, Alexander, paid his son's passage on the SS Inanda to Beira, from where he travelled by rail to Umtali. Spotswood earned his living over the next few years mining, coach-driving and farming. He received a more permanent position in November, when he was taken on by Crofton Townsend. Spotswood quickly gained his employer's trust, and was made farm manager at Lowdale when Townsend went to visit north for a year. Having acquired the skills necessary to ranch successfully, Spotswood decided that he would start his own farm in the country as soon as Townsend returned. According to Probert, Spotswood by now regarded himself "primarily as a farmer", a self-identification he would retain for the rest of his life. Military career Spotswood attended the Army Staff College, where he discovered that at the college the Army kept 200 horses for the officers' fox hunting. At a time when all services were very short of equipment, the Army high command—which was still dominated by cavalry officers—clearly had a different set of priorities from technocrats like Spotswood, who quipped that the army commanders would only be happy with the tank if someone developed one that "ate hay and thereafter made noises like a horse". He also had a low opinion of the Navy; he commented that there were three things which should never be allowed on a well-run yacht "a wheelbarrow, an umbrella and a naval officer". Montgomery was one of the few army officers he met while at the college whom he liked, possibly because they shared certain underlying personality characteristics. Following Bainbridge's resignation, Stopswood became Marshal of the IAF, having served as Bainbridge's aide-de-camp and head of Bombing Initiatives. Category:The Imperial Military Category:The Great Noble Houses of Falleentium